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A PILGRIM OF THE 
INFINITE 



BY 

WILLIAM VALENTINE KELLEY 



I go to prove my soul ! 

I see my way as birds their trackless way; 

I shall arrive: what time, what circuit first 

I know not. But some time, 

In God's good time, I shall arrive. 

He guides me and the birds. In his good time!" 

— Browning's Paracelsus. 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



^>i3 



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Copyright, J9-4, by 
WILLIAM VALENTINE KELLEY 



SEP 24 1914 

^)CI.A379646 
id *•» 






3 

d 



TO 

THE RADIANT MEMORY 

OF 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

A POET OF THE SOUL, 

A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 



"In youth I looked to these very skies, 
And, probing their immensities, 
I found God there, His visible power; 
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
Of the power, an equal evidence 
That His love, there too, was the nobler dower. 
For the loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless god 
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." 

— Browning, "Christmas Eve." 

"Earth breaks up, time drops away, 
In flows heaven, with its new day 
Of endless life, when He who trod, 
Very man and very God, 
This earth in weakness, shame, and pain, 
Dying the death whose signs remain 
Up yonder on the accursed tree, — 
Shall come again, no more to be 
Of captivity the thrall, 
But the one God, All in all, 
King of kings, Lord of lords, 
As His servant John received the words, 
'I died, and live forevermore.' " 

— Browning, "Christmas Eve." 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

"I dare at times imagine to my need 
Some future state revealed to us ... , 
Unlimited in capability 
For joy, as this is in desire for joy, — 
To seek which the joy-hunger forces us: 
That, stung by the straitness of our life, made 

strait 
On purpose to make prized the life at large — 
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, 
We burst there as the worm into the fly, 
Who, while a worm still, wants his wings." 

— Browning, "Cleon." 

The greatest fact in the universe, 
the paramount reality, is Person- 
ality. There can be no region in 
which that is not true. At any 
rate, we are not able to imagine any- 
thing that can outrank, transcend, 
or supersede personality. For a crit- 
ical definition we have neither time 
nor need here. Avoiding metaphys- 
ical subtleties and ignoring philo- 
sophical quibbles, we may say simply 
that by personality we mean intelli- 
7 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

gence, feeling, moral perception, and 
will gathered up into a center of self- 
conscious, self -contemplative, and 
self-determining being — a being who 
can say, "I," and who is both a sub- 
ject who knows others and an object 
knowable by others. The most 
fundamental theme of philosophy is 
the problem of Personality, upon 
which all great philosophers have 
bent their energies; in our day 
William James and Henri Bergson 
especially, although the clearest, 
ablest, and most convincing modern 
master of the subject is Borden P. 
Bowne in his book entitled Person- 
alism. 

Personality, as a fact seen in God 
and in Man, is really inescapable, 
ultimately undeniable. Truly is it 
said that if a man imagines himself 
constrained by science or psychology 
to deny the real existence of person- 
ality, he is bound to say of himself, 
"I do not exist." If he shrinks from 

8 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

that absurdity, he admits person- 
ality to be a reality. 

At the top of the universe is 
Personality — an eternal, supreme, 
infinite Person, the personal Abso- 
lute whom we name God. Who 
says so? Jesus Christ says so; does 
anybody pretend to know better 
than he? Matthew Arnold in Liter- 
ature and Dogma strangely con- 
tended that the God revealed in the 
Old Testament is not a personal 
deity, and cited a number of texts 
to prove that Israel's God is an 
eternal It. Whoever denies the per- 
sonality of God is not a Christian 
thinker. Illingworth in his Bampton 
Lectures said that it is Christianity 
that has developed and completed 
the conception of personality as we 
now have it. Hegel had gone fur- 
ther by affirming that the world 
owes to Christianity the very idea 
of personality. Recently a Hindu 
monk, one of the numerous Swamis 

9 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

who have visited America from India, 
said, while addressing two hundred 
people, "We are not persons; there 
is not a person in this room." That 
shows the hopeless futility of pagan 
philosophy, groping in the dark with- 
out the one clue that can guide it 
out into the light. That eminent 
Japanese scholar, Dr. Harada, Presi- 
dent of the Doshisha College at 
Kyoto, says that his countrymen as 
well as their co-religionists in Asia, 
have never attained to an adequate 
conception of the worth of the 
human individual, and that their 
lack of a clear perception of the 
personality of man, with its central 
significance and circumferential im- 
plications, goes far to explain their 
lack of any clear conception of a 
personal God. The two things go 
naturally and logically together, each 
illuminating and confirming the 
other, the personality of man and 
the personality of God, the two 

10 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

supreme resplendent facts "the ac- 
knowledgment of which, accepted 
by thy reason, solves for thee all 
questions in the earth or out of it, 
and hath so far advanced thee to be 
wise." Denial of human person- 
ality is absurd, and belief in a 
personal Deity is necessary not 
only because, in Kant's phrase, any 
other is "not a God that can in- 
terest us," but also because any 
other is to us unthinkable. While 
Tennyson was sitting for his portrait 
to the great artist, Watts, the two 
veterans, who had been friends for 
many years, talked much about their 
religious beliefs. "Both felt that 
the world could not get on without 
a personal God." Even ex-President 
Eliot of Harvard affirms that "so 
long as man is man God will be 
thought of as a Person." The 
qualities or attributes which we 
ascribe to deity and which are 
largely manifested in the universe, 
ii 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

such as intelligence, will, wisdom, 
purpose, beneficence, cannot be im- 
agined to exist apart from person- 
ality. 

At the top of the universe is unde- 
niably some supreme reality, some 
infinite entity. Mr. Arnold, describ- 
ing it by one of its manifestations, 
calls it "An eternal Power (not our- 
selves) which makes for righteous- 
ness.' ' Herbert Spencer calls it "The 
eternal and infinite Energy from 
which all things proceed." They 
both say "which," not "who" nor 
"whom." But John Tyndall said, 
"Standing before this power, this 
energy, which from the universe 
forces itself upon me, I dare not 
do other than speak of a He, a Spirit, 
a Cause." His doing this in a non- 
scientific or extra-scientific sense does 
not make it any less real. And after 
Tyndall, Romanes, the eminent biol- 
ogist, speaking as a scientist, said, 
"Within the range of human observa- 

12 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

tion personality is the fact which 
most wears the appearance of finality 
— the appearance of that unana- 
lyzable and inexplicable nature which 
we are bound to believe must be- 
long to the ultimate mystery of 
Being." When Schelling, misinter- 
preting some of Hegel's reasoning, 
cried out, " Consequently there is no 
Personal God," Hegel quickly cor- 
rected the misunderstanding by say- 
ing: "Not so! The exact contrary 
is true. There is a personal God." 
Lotze also insists that God is God 
because he is the perfect Person. 
Emerson, who was accused of pan- 
theism, does not, in speaking of 
Deity, agree with the gentlemen who 
prefer "which" to "who." In one 
place he writes, "in its highest moods 
the soul gives itself alone, original, 
and pure to the Lonely, Original, 
and Pure, who, on that condition, 
gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks to 
the soul." For our part, not being 
13 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

persuaded of the superiority of the 
impersonal pronoun, we look up to 
the Highest- We-Know and say He, 
Who, affirming an infinite intelligence 
and will, a supreme personal Being 
at the summit and center of things. 
And this we do not only by phil- 
osophic warrant and necessity, but 
also as the mind's only refuge from 
the most horrible of all possible 
conclusions ; for we cannot help agree- 
ing with Von Hartman, the chief 
apostle of reasoned pessimism, that 
"if the Absolute Being be impersonal, 
the gospel of despair necessarily 
follows" for us. And so long as the 
mind can find any footing above 
and outside of that blackest of all 
abysses, it refuses to make the 
suicidal plunge into that bottomless 
pit. 

At the top of earthly existences is 
Personality. On earth there is noth- 
ing higher than Man. His distinc- 
tion and significance lie in his being 
14 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

a person. This differentiates him 
from all other creatures on this 
planet. To ascribe personality to 
brutes would be preposterous; nor, 
we remark, parenthetically, is there 
any ground for supposing them im- 
mortal — John Wesley, to the con- 
trary notwithstanding — since im- 
mortality is an attribute or perquisite 
of personality; and the most intel- 
ligent animal ever seen was not a 
person; no, not even Consul, the 
famous chimpanzee. Being a person 
classes man scientifically in the same 
category with God, relates him gener- 
ically to Divinity, and separates 
him from the animal by a great 
and impassable gulf. The Christian 
affirmation of personality in God 
and in Man is clearly stated by 
Dr. Sterling, the British philosopher, 
who says: "There can no Supreme 
Being be but that must to himself 
say, 'I Am that I Am.' It is the 
very heart of the Christian religion 
15 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

that the Infinite God who is a 
Person and says T became finite 
as Man who is a person and says 
'I.' Man is I; even by having 
been made like unto God [Gen. 
i. 2j], Man is I. It is that that he 
has of God in him." 

At the top and climax of divine 
Revelation is Personality. God's 
revelation of truth, progressively 
disclosed through ages, came to 
its culmination in Christ, made 
its complete, luminous, and efful- 
gent expression in a unique and 
peerless composite personality, Di- 
vine-human, the Man of Nazareth, 
in whom dwelt all the fullness of 
the Godhead bodily; a personality 
nowise explicable as a human evolu- 
tion, a truly divine embodiment, and 
1 'stepping/ ' as even Theodore Parker 
said, "thousands of years before the 
race of man." More complete illu- 
mination the soul cannot receive, the 
mind cannot imagine, than radiates 

16 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

from the light of the knowledge of 
the glory of God shining in the face 
of Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the 
Truth/' "He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." From this 
glance at the reality, the nature, and 
the rank of personality, we pass to 
consider the Meaning and Range of 
the Human Personality. 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 
i. Personality means Power. 

In creating each new individuality 
and adding to the ranks of being 
another intelligent self-conscious ego, 
the Creator sets off a fresh center 
of energy and action, of choice and 
causation, of self-determining pur- 
pose and influence. Among the 
elements a new force has been 
introduced, among the intelligences 
a new and independent mind able 
to assent or dissent, to obstruct or 
further plans and operations which 
may be proceeding here, able also 
17 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

to devise and initiate plans and 
operations of its own. Each individ- 
ual is a thinker and a doer in realms 
of thought, volition, action — a pos- 
itive factor participating in affairs, a 
party to various transactions. Per- 
sonality is a center of original and 
elemental energy, radiating influence 
and producing effects. Each living 
person introduces something incalcu- 
lable, purposeful, determinant amid 
the workings of the laws of physics; 
he can superintend physical and 
chemical processes, arrest them, or 
permit them to go on, and can 
guide and direct them. Recently Sir 
Oliver Lodge, president of the British 
Scientific Association, spoke to that 
great body of scientists as follows: 
' 'Existence is like the output from 
a loom. The pattern, the design 
for the weaving, is in some sort 
'there' already; but whereas our 
looms are mere machines, once the 
guiding cards have been fed into 

18 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

them, the loom of time is different 
in being complicated by a multitude 
of free agents who can modify the 
web, making the product more beau- 
tiful or more ugly according as they 
are in harmony or disharmony with 
the general scheme. I venture to 
maintain that manifest imperfections 
are thus accounted for and that free- 
dom could be given on no other 
terms, nor at any less cost. The hu- 
man being's ability thus to work for 
weal or woe is no illusion; it is a 
reality, a responsible power which 
conscious agents possess; wherefore 
the resulting fabric is not something 
preordained and inexorable. The 
power of the human free agent to 
modify the course of things and 
events is no fiction, but an actual 
factor which must be counted in and 
reckoned with." Personality means 
power. 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 

19 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

2. Personality means Proprietorship. 
To be a person is to have a 
freehold on the rich and fertile soil 
of existence. Just to be alive is 
to hold some things in fee simple. 
As a living creature with lungs I 
have a lien on millions of cubic 
miles of atmosphere for my share 
of oxygen. Whoever put me here 
made me a resident and property 
holder, occupant and part owner of 
extensive premises, of valuable mes- 
suage and curtilage. I am born a 
shareholder in the benefits of the 
cosmos, holding some certificates of 
capital stock in an incorporated 
universe, with coupons maturing as 
the seasons roll; possessor of the 
multifarious privileges, adjuncts, and 
emoluments of this life. And when 
I said "this life," and paused on 
that period, I heard a Voice coming 
from between the lids of a Book, 
a voice which breaks to temporal 
ears news of eternity, and which 
20 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

bade me add that to be a person 
means to have beyond this life a 
claim to real estate located where 
no surveyor can run his chains 
around it — to be heir to an inher- 
itance greater than any surrogate 
can make record of — "heir," says 
that authentic and supremely author- 
itative Volume, possible "heir of God 
and joint heir with Jesus Christ," 
by and for whom the worlds were 
made, capable of receiving from Him 
whose right it is to bestow the 
enormous information that in some 
sense "all things are yours." Down 
over every human personality that 
stupendous announcement converges 
its thrilling tidings for the soul 
awakening to a knowledge of itself, 
its sphere, its possible reaches and 
possessions. 

It is a great thing to be a per- 
son, because 
3. Personality means Citizenship. 

If the visible form be only twelve 
21 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

inches long and twelve hours old, 
the little stranger is at home in 
the universe, drops into natural and 
inevitable relations with the system 
of things, and has already estab- 
lished a sweet and satisfactory modus 
vivendi with his immediate environ- 
ment. Ask the mother if it is not 
so. Politically speaking, he may be 
called a subject in a cosmic theoc- 
racy, or more properly in our 
Arminian view, a citizen and an 
elector in the Republic of God, 
having a personal voice and vote 
in the determining and ordering 
of things, each individual sharing 
to some extent in directing and 
governing the world. Of no mean 
city is he a citizen. The toga 
he puts on at coming of age invests 
him with a higher dignity than 
that which swelled the breast of 
the Roman with pride as he said 
amid the Seven Hills or in the 
ends of the earth, "I am a Roman 

22 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

citizen.' * Through conferment by 
Christ, through grace divine, man 
holds the option of suffrage in a 
more than worldly state, for besides 
citizenship in this earthly ward and 
precinct, he receives in the gold 
box of his personality the proffer 
of the freedom of the City of God, 
distinguished privileges in the munic- 
ipality of Heaven; which superior 
franchise and distinction he may 
either appropriate or refuse. Anax- 
agoras had his eye on this celestial 
citizenship in his calm reply to his 
critics : 

When shallow hearts reproached this pilgrim wise, 
"Wanderer, why dost thou not thy country prize?" 
He raised to heaven his tranquil smiling eyes: 
"I do," he answered. "There my country lies." 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 
4. Personality means Royalty. 

Really it is kingliness done up 

in a small package. Man not only 

votes; he rules. Each birth is the 

arrival of a prince or princess of 

23 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

the blood royal. You teach the 
little tots to assert their royal lin- 
eage; they are singing everywhere, "I 
am the child of a King/' You 
organize circles of King's Daughters. 
Literally the creation of a free agent 
is the installation of a potentate 
who will take his ordained and 
legitimate place among the powers 
that be; autocratic Lord Rector of 
something or other, perhaps of many 
things. His mouth is like the Pasha's 
gate: out of it go swift messages 
of command. There is sufficient 
reason for saying now and here, 
"His Majesty, Man," "Her Royal 
Highness, Woman." And beyond 
these narrow borders, past the 
bounds of all earthly dominion, the 
faithful soul may read afar, in 
an almost blinding splendor of an- 
nouncement, the imperial bulletin, "I 
will make thee ruler over many 
things." That means a larger and 

loftier kingliness to come. 
24 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 
5. Personality implies Obligation. 

Existence is not all privilege; it 
is duty as well. The more royal 
man's nature and state, the larger 
and more binding his responsibilities. 
Noblesse oblige. The equities require 
that property owners shall be tax- 
payers, each assessed in proportion 
to his possessions. Every consumer 
is obligated to be in some way a 
producer, to contribute his proper 
share to the general weal. "Freely 
ye have received, freely give/' is 
the law. No personality is isolated 
and free from responsibility toward 
others. Each is under moral bonds, 
captive to relationships, party to a 
reciprocity treaty, and must live up 
to its requirements. One speaks of 
"the mighty hopes that make us 
men." It is as fit and relevant to 
speak of the immense and weighty 
obligations, born of august relation- 
25 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

ships, which constitute us men. Per- 
sonality involves obligation and 
responsibility. Conscience tells man 
that he is a responsible being. 
Chesterton says of Herbert Spencer: 
"He rejected dogma and affronted 
heaven and the angels with his 
doubts and denials, but there was 
one hard, arrogant dogma that he 
never doubted: he never doubted 
that he was responsible." 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 

6. Personality means Perpetuity, or 
if immortality be by any held to 
be conditional, then it means possi- 
ble perpetuity — a possibly perma- 
nent place among the orders of 
existence which people the living 
universe. To admit this does not 
subject man's reason to inordinate 
strain nor press faith to the point 
of credulity. Nothing incredible is 
implied, since it is more likely that 

we, being now alive, shall continue 
26 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

to exist than that, when we were 
not, we should have begun to be. 
The wonder of the possible per- 
sistence of personality is less great 
than the marvel of our origination. 
The irresistible force of that reason- 
ing even Thomas Paine urgently in- 
sisted on, as did also Voltaire, who 
asserted that we have at least as 
many reasons for affirming immor- 
tality as for denying it. John 
Bigelow, the eminent lawyer, jour- 
nalist, and diplomat, held a brief for 
the belief in immortality and argued 
it ably in the Court of Reason. To 
the question, "Is there existence after 
death?" his reply was, "As a lawyer 
I would naturally begin by saying 
that the burden of proof rests upon 
those who deny the continuity of 
life." 

Mr. Huxley, a competent author- 
ity as to what science teaches, wrote 
concerning the doctrine of personal 

survival beyond death that physical 
27 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

science has nothing to say against 
it; while Professor Bowne from his 
chair of philosophy, surveying the 
whole field of modern reasoning and 
research, declared that, "If the moral 
nature demands continued existence 
or any word of revelation affirms 
it, there is no fact or argument 
against it." Well, the demands of 
the moral nature do require it, and 
Holy Scripture written in the Bible, 
harmonious with the deeper holy 
scripture written by the Spirit of 
the living God in fleshly tables of 
the human heart, does declare it — 
indeed, can have no particle of 
meaning or value without it. An- 
other respectable and representative 
modern voice is that of John Fiske, 
who says in his book on The Destiny 
of Man in the Light of His Origin 
that the scientific doctrine of evolu- 
tion, of which he was a chief ex- 
ponent, so far from prognosticating 

that death ends all, really predicts 
28 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

a post-mortem progress to further 
stages of development. It is a 
simple fact that with nothing in our 
hands but evolution's latest word 
we would have warrant for asking 
incredulously with John Hall Ing- 
ham, Did chaos form, and water, 
air, and fire, rocks, trees, the worm 
work toward Humanity, merely in 
order that man at last beneath the 
churchyard spire might be once more 
the worm, the tree, the rock? Only 
this and nothing more? Dust to 
dust the miserable, pitiable, and con- 
temptible conclusion of all the climb- 
ing and enlarging life which has 
made its mighty march by slow steps 
up the gradual slope of the long 
ages? Science says,' "No!" Reason 
says, "No!" The moral sense says, 
"No!" Socrates says, "No!" Great- 
est of all, Jesus says, "No!" Even 
the peripatetic rhetorical platform 
scoffer, the thrifty professional blas- 
phemer, the itinerant lecturer on 
29 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

"The Mistakes of Moses," said, 
"No!" when he uncovered beside his 
brother's grave and babbled incon- 
sistently of an "eternal hope," and 
afterward wrote that "in the night 
of death hope sees a star and listen- 
ing love can hear the rustle of a 
wing." In the whole earth not 
one voice entitled to respect denies 
to personality a probable, or at least 
possible, persistence beyond bodily 
dissolution ; while he speaks for man- 
kind who says sturdily, "My foothold 
is mortised in granite; I laugh at 
what you call dissolution"; as he 
also does who says, "Only speak the 
name of Man, and you announce 
the doctrine of immortality. It 
cleaves to his constitution"; and as 
did Robert Browning when he wrote 
in his wife's New Testament these 
words from Dante, "Thus I believe, 
thus I affirm, thus I am certain it 
is, that from this life I shall pass to 
another better." At the time when 
30 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

this essay is being written, Sir 
Oliver Lodge, at the climax of his 
distinguished career as a scientist, 
is using the most exalted, dignified, 
and commanding hour of his life as 
an opportunity for declaring to the 
scientific world his firm belief in 
the persistence of personality beyond 
bodily death, his conviction that 
man is a pilgrim of the Infinite; 
while Bergson the great philosopher, 
supports the great scientist by de- 
claring, " There is positively no reason 
to deny the continuity of individual 
spiritual existence after bodily dis- 
solution. There are no facts that 
warrant such a conclusion." 

It is a great thing to be a person, 
because 

7. Personality means immeasurable 
Possibility of Progress, 

Personality has an amazing off- 
look, a prospect vastly and magnif- 
icently disproportioned to its earthly 
and temporal platform and to its 
31 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

visible dimensions. Only set the 
smallest individual on his tiny feet 
and he looks away into realms 
remote and spacious — realms which 
may hold for him extensive and 
sumptuous opportunities, to whose 
gates, perchance, he has the key, 
or may obtain it. Give personality 
a start, and it has the propensity 
and the power to travel, no one 
can calculate how far; so that the 
human creature, stepping forward 
from his first self-conscious hour, is 
warranted in singing as the song 
of his pilgrimage, "Thus onward we 
move, and, save God above, none 
guesseth how wondrous the journey 
will prove.' ' Simply let personality 
begin, and the angle of possible 
progress opening outward from the 
mathematic point of birth is one 
the subtending arc of which no 
trigonometry can measure. Though 
the human person have no larger 
foothold on the earth than the print 
32 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

which the bound foot of a Chinese 
woman makes in the dust, he has 
a boundless firmament overhead, and 
is aware of regions above and be- 
yond, elsewheres and hereafters con- 
cerning which he has surmises and 
presentiments, and the contents of 
which he may to some extent explore 
and in some sense possibly appro- 
priate. To what extent and in what 
sense? is an inquiry worthy the 
serious meditation of every earnest 
mind, and, indeed, obligatory upon 
everyone who has any sense at all. 
If this is not a question of dignity 
and import, then there can be no 
momentous questions, and existence 
itself must be a frivolous triviality, 
the story of which can have no 
more meaning than a tale told by 
an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
signifying nothing. 

Our present meditation is in the 
august presence of that tremendous 
question, in the solemn shadow of 

33 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

its gigantic interrogation point. How 
extensive is the range of our per- 
sonality? How much of a traveler 
may the soul be? What is the 
human itinerary? 

Now, evidently, demonstration by 
diagram is not here in place, nor 
is that sort of certainty aimed at 
which is born at the end of a 
syllogism. In the highest things of 
life it is impossible to bind the under- 
standing to conclusions by the clamp 
of a logical ergo. There are ranges 
of reality to which the methods of 
logic, mathematics, and physical sci- 
ence are as useless as they are 
inapplicable. Nevertheless, knowl- 
edge is not shut out from those 
realms, and toward them agnosticism 
is not the necessary or respectable 
attitude of mind. With reference to 
their contents we may arrive at 
certitude as solid and satisfactory as 
any mathematic, scientific, or syl- 
logistic conclusion. We simply pre- 

34 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

sent a few facts and suggestions 
which may open here and there a 
vista, flash a searchlight off into the 
dark, and help to substantiate the 
distinctively Christian affirmation : 
Great is personality. Its dignity is 
lofty. Its assets are large. Its fellow- 
ships are noble. Its sphere and range 
are possibly immense. 

Consider its amazing range, actual 
and possible. Beginning with the 
lowest, the physical, observe the 
Range of man's Bodily Powers. Is 
it not somewhat impressive that this 
human mite should be able to look 
so far? From here to the most 
distant discovered fixed star is so 
long a journey that a beam of light 
is hundreds of years in making it; 
yet man's eye takes that journey 
and gazes upon and examines that 
star. Does some one ask whether 
animals have not the same range of 
sight? We answer promptly, No! 
For one thing, man can piece out 

35 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

his powers of vision and extend his 
view indefinitely up and down. The 
brutes have no establishment for 
grinding magnifying lenses and re- 
flectors. There has never been an 
Alvan Clark in business among them. 
No smart chimpanzee from ''Pro- 
fessor" Garner's kindergarten in the 
woods of Africa has invented tel- 
escope or microscope or even knows 
how to use one. No educated gorilla 
has handled the spectroscope and re- 
ported what Aldebaran and Alcyone 
are made of. Furthermore, brute 
vision, if it had equal range, bears 
small resemblance in its quality to 
ours; for even if things visible make 
the same image on the animal retina 
as on the human, the reflection there 
is incidental, superficial, meaning- 
less, futile. Whatever vision brutes 
may have of distant regions con- 
veys to them no significance, awakens 
no interest. The lion prowling in 
the ruins of Persepolis sees the 
36 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

yellow moon shedding mellow light 
on moldering plinth and column, and 
the Siberian wolf sending his long 
howl across white frozen plains 
receives into his lifted eye star- 
beams from the frontiers of space; 
the same was true of Newton's dog, 
"Diamond," but then, as Carlyle 
said, "to Newton and Newton's dog, 
what a different pair of universes !" 
Moonlight and starlight stir no in- 
quiry in the brutes, tethered and 
limited as they are every way to 
the ground they stalk upon. Lion 
and wolf have nothing in them that 
goes prowling up the heavens; much 
less do they turn a look of recog- 
nition above them or suspect them- 
selves akin to anything higher. 

With man it is totally otherwise. 
This short and slender perpendicular 
midget not only sees the skies, but 
mounts them. Finding himself alive 
on a small globule which he names 
the earth, he plants his feet on a 

37 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

few inches of surface-dust and thence 
takes a great leap into immensity, 
goes to see where the stars are and 
how they live ; circumvents them and 
dives into the fountains of their 
light; frustrates their eternal silence 
and makes them tell their paths; 
passes from station to station and 
marks the outline of their geometry; 
accosts the wildest comets, detains 
them long enough to make engage- 
ments with them for ten thousand 
years, and they will keep their 
tryst with him or his successors; 
saunters up endless avenues of light, 
comrading with huge and mighty 
worlds; and then drops back on 
this little grass-plot, unwearied by 
his stupendous excursions and mur- 
muring something about "many 
mansions" in his ' 'Father's house," 
strangely rolling that saying over 
like a sweet morsel under his tongue. 
Preposterous as it seems for a 
creature who, when he presently lays 
38 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

his visible part down under the 
daisies, may apparently be bounded 
by a headstone, a footstone, and a 
tiny mound, we nevertheless know 
that the range of the human per- 
sonality by use of his bodily powers 
is literally immense. In general, the 
physical perquisites of merely being 
alive are varied and extensive. As 
foothold and an ear are equivalent 
to a life-lease of a reserved seat in 
the world's great concert hall with 
all its manifold music — hum of in- 
sects, song of birds, sounds of winds 
and waters, human voices and all 
instruments — so also existence and 
an eye furnish a complimentary 
ticket to the whole vast panoramic 
exhibition of the spectacular uni- 
verse; eyesight enters free to that 
enormous cyclorama that is tented 
between zenith and horizon. No 
human life is so poor or form so 
petite but it has through its physical 
organs a range amazingly dispro- 
39 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

portioned to its own feebleness and 
littleness. Diminutive David, the He- 
brew lad, lying at night beside his 
flock among the Bethlehem hills, can 
see the whole celestial splendor over- 
head, 

When in heaven the stars about the moon 
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, 
And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart. 

The simple question at this point 
is whether there is anything signif- 
icant and suggestive in the plain 
prosaic fact that man's wide-away 
vision ranges from so narrow a foot- 
hold as he has to so enormous a 
firmament as he sees; that this 
ridiculously infinitesimal human dot 
casts his visual line into the depths 
of a boundless sphere; that his 
organs of sight put him as actually 
in touch with distant suns and 
systems, nebulae and galaxies, as if 
his eyeball were a marble and he 
40 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

shot it across a pavement of sapphire 
to strike the outer rim of space. 

Note next the Ranging Power of 
the Human Intellect. Give the mind 
a small foothold and it may explore 
a large sphere. A squirrel can go 
through a whole forest up in mid- 
air by running out on the longest 
limbs and jumping from one tree to 
the next. The mind is such a 
squirrel. In the deep, wide forest 
of the universe it travels through 
empty spaces by long leaps. Give 
it a limb to leap from, it will find 
something beyond to leap to. The 
mind is capable of such procedure, 
and habitually practices it. Con- 
fucius said, "When I have presented 
one corner of a subject to anyone 
and he cannot from it learn the 
other three, I do not repeat my 
lesson.' ' The normal mind can al- 
ways do that; the mind that cannot 
is sub -normal and deficient, so excep- 
tional as to be incapable of education 
41 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

or extensive development and prog- 
ress. 

As to the physical universe, wide 
exploration of it by the investigating 
human mind is made possible by its 
organic and constitutional unity, by 
the homogeneity of its materials and 
the uniformity of its laws. It is 
like a seamless garment, and woven 
of the same texture throughout. 
Analysis of the minute and near gives 
the constitution of the enormous and 
remote, because the spectroscope re- 
ports that the same constituents 
compose both. Give the chemist 
one drop of human blood and he 
knows what qualities are in the 
veins of the fifteen hundred millions 
who populate the earth. Within a 
raindrop's compass lie a planet's 
elements, and both are globular by 
virtue of the same laws. State an 
asteroid and by inclusion the solar 
system is stated, with all its acces- 
sories and relationships. The mole- 
42 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

cule confesses and exposes Aldebaran. 
Because all forces of nature are at 
play in the atom, therefore the atom 
samples and publishes the universe. 
Physical science by studying and 
analyzing the common soap bubble 
reaches conclusions concerning the 
plenum that fills the interstellar 
spaces. How much Jesus Christ was 
thinking of when he said, "Consider 
the lilies," no man fully knows, 
but one thing which makes the lily 
wondrously worth considering is that 
the contents and mechanism of the 
entire material cosmos are reported 
and recorded by measurable effects 
in the development of its delicate 
life. Astronomy, geology, mineral- 
ogy, biology, and meteorology are 
referred to in its roots and stem, 
its bud and bloom, its fibers and its 
sap. An explanation of the lily 
involves the whole physical creation. 
Mrs. Browning set scientific truth to 
poetry when she wrote, 

43 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

No lily-muffled hum of summer bee, 
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; 
No pebble at your feet but proves a sphere; 
No chaffinch but implies the cherubim. 

And the same involvement of one 
with all gives the meaning to Tenny- 
son's lines: 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies; 

Hold you here root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

William Watson thanks Wordsworth 
for making him 

See that each blade of grass 
Has roots that grope about eternity, 
And see in each drop of dew upon each blade 
A mirror of the inseparable All. 

The human intellect avails itself of 
this cosmic unity by traversing the 
universe far and wide as if on 
highways cast up and roads mac- 
adamized for the journeyings of a 
Pilgrim of the Infinite. 

Mathematical processes especially 
put on exhibition the ranging power 

44 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

of the mind, its ability to proceed 
from known to unknown, from the 
little to the large. One brief equa- 
tion contains the elements of a 
great problem which the mathemati- 
cian can work out through intricate 
and extensive processes to complete 
solution. A single proposition dem- 
onstrated may have as many crystal- 
clear corollaries as Jupiter has moons. 
Give the geometer any three points 
of a circle and he constructs the 
circle, fixes its center, draws with 
confident precision its whole circum- 
ference, and is as certain of all 
the points not given as of the three 
points you gave him. Such things 
are natural and easy to man's intel- 
lectual powers. And there are proved 
mathematical laws on which, as on 
a ladder, the human mind can climb. 
The ladder is invisible, intangible; 
the eye cannot see it, the feet can- 
not feel it; but the mind knows it 
and mounts sure-footed. To deal 

45 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

with infinity is part of the regular 
business of mathematics. A Pilgrim 
of the Infinite is the human mind. 
By such methods the mind ranges 
far abroad through the material uni- 
verse, ascertaining its extent, its 
nature, its construction, acquiring 
knowledge which is considered trust- 
worthy. Beyond dispute personality 
has passports and a firman to travel 
and explore and excavate throughout 
vast regions of the physical realm. 

But at this point arises a momen- 
tous and disputed question: Has man 
the power to carry his progressive 
knowledge beyond to non-material, 
supernatural, spiritual realms and 
realities? And thinkers divide into 
two classes on opposite sides of this 
interrogation point; they go to right 
and left like the sheep and the goats. 
The mere physicists assert that no 
one can have assured and valid 
knowledge extending beyond the uni- 
verse of matter, while the opposing 
4 6 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

spiritual party affirm that man has 
satisfying knowledge of entities and 
verities altogether independent of 
matter, and that an actual realm 
of things spiritual is discernible by 
trustworthy faculties of the human 
spirit. 

Mr. Huxley disparaged Lord Ba- 
con's division of the realm of knowl- 
edge into two worlds and insisted 
that there is only one world that 
we have any knowledge of, and that 
is the world which physical science 
perceives, apprehends, and reports. 
Now of natural science several things 
are true: (i) it deals with the lower 
facts of the universe; (2) it employs 
the lower faculties of the mind; 
(3) its results and acquisitions are 
of secondary import, transient use, 
and perishable value. But there is 
another world than that of matter 
— a realm superior, spiritual, eternal 
— and there is a reputable and ration- 
al science relating thereto. Of this 
47 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

science also, as of the other, three 
things are true: (i) this science 
lives and moves in the sublimest 
regions of reality; (2) it employs 
the noblest of human faculties, fac- 
ulties higher than those by which 
man solves an equation or calculates 
an eclipse; (3) the knowledge it ob- 
tains is in dignity supreme and in 
importance primary and perpetual. 
Of the existence of this superior 
realm, man has, to begin with, in- 
tuitive conviction, and, in addition, 
a propensity to investigate and ex- 
plore it, and even to make with it 
a reciprocity treaty establishing so- 
cial and commercial relations. It is 
vain to call halt to the intellect at 
the boundary line of matter, for the 
mind's curious, inquisitive eagerness, 
the momentum acquired in its lower 
progress, the silent attraction of 
things beyond of which human na- 
ture has premonitions and for which 
it has predilections, all insure that 
48 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

the unchecked mind will pass the 
border of the visible and palpable 
and ponderable. The same impulse 
which carries it forward among phys- 
ical facts should carry it over in 
sight of other facts beyond. John 
Tyndall in his famous Belfast address 
said: "I cannot stop abruptly where 
the microscope ceases to be of use. 
The vision of the mind author- 
itatively supplements the vision of 
the eye. By a necessity engendered 
and justified by science, I cross the 
boundary of experimental evidence 
and discern" — discern what? Why, 
something beyond; for our purpose 
here it matters not what. All that 
we care for is that Professor Tyn- 
dall declared precisely 'what we here 
assert, that a necessity engendered 
and justified by science compels the 
mind to recognize realities which are 
not disparaged by the fact that they 
are not scientifically or mathemati- 
cally or logically demonstrable. And 

49 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

these are the incomparably majestic 
realities. Natural science has neither 
dignity nor meaning unless it merges 
at the top into the highest questions 
of morals and theology. Its knowl- 
edge only "yields mere basement for 
the soul's emprise." 

Thinkers unsurpassed in intellec- 
tual power and culture by any of 
the physicists assert spiritual facts 
and demonstrate them by methods 
which science approves. One such 
wrote a book showing that the cre- 
dentials of science are the warrant 
of faith. Here are some specimen 
thinkers in whom we see the human 
reason on its travels ranging out and 
up through spiritual regions. 

Here is Descartes. He began his 
reasoning by standing as with feet 
pressed together on the one small 
fact of his own existence, which was 
to him indubitably real firm footing. 
But above and around this arched 
the vision of things which this fact 
50 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

involved, implied, or had sight of; 
and he proved a firmament of human 
knowledge which included all that 
religion asks men to trust — a fir- 
mament of truth and reality so vast 
that the exploration of it made him 
a pilgrim of the Infinite. 

Here is Kant. He stood on 
the fact of consciousness. Standing 
there, he found himself within hear- 
ing of the Categorical Imperative and 
saw a moral law which covered him ; 
saw an actual sphere overhead that 
contained between its zenith and 
horizon facts which stood steady as 
fixed stars and shone like a reflection 
from the glory of God's face — the 
sublime and splendid facts of free 
agency, liberty, divine providence, 
and immortality. And thus Im- 
manuel Kant, though he never left 
his native city of Konigsberg except 
for a few miles' walk into the 
country, was a tremendous traveler 
— a pilgrim of the Infinite. 
51 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

Here is Bishop Butler, who framed 
his noble Analogy by standing on 
the admitted fact of an intelligent 
Author and Moral Governor of the 
world, and showed that the teachings 
of Christianity hang their essential 
concave over whoever stands there 
with the faculty of sight: that Wil- 
liam Pitt could not see it did not 
prove that Butler was wrong. Some 
men need to purge their vision with 
moral "euphrasy and rue." Even 
Pitt would admit that the author 
of the great Analogy was a pilgrim 
of the Infinite. 

And back yonder, tallest of them 
all against the sky, stands Paul, who 
entering as a stranger the city of 
violet-crowned Athena, found the 
wise men of Greece standing on two 
points of conviction, one expressed 
in their altar inscription, "To the 
unknown God," and the other in 
their poet's line, "We also are his 
offspring." Then the apostle vir- 

52 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

tually said to them, "Ye wise men 
of Athens, stand right there, just 
where you are, with your feet on 
those two points, and 111 show you 
more than you ever saw before." 
Straightway he unveiled before them 
the Christ and unfolded to them the 
religion of salvation. Him whom 
they ignorantly worshiped declared 
he unto them; and from the Hill of 
Mars, shouldering Minerva's mount, 
Athenian gossips and philosophers 
had that day a glimpse of the full- 
ness of saving truth. Anyone stand- 
ing there on the Areopagus and 
listening to Paul could have a clear 
view into the heaven of heavens, 
though Athens slept that night upon 
the Attic plain among her marble 
divinities without realizing that the 
ambassador of an eternal Empire had 
arrived and presented his credentials. 
Descartes, Kant, Butler, Paul, they 
were all pilgrims of the Infinite. 
So much for the far-ranging power 

53 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

of the human intellect with its 
insatiable curiosity and inquisitive- 
ness, its eager and tireless pro- 
pensity to travel, discover, and 
investigate. 

Consider now the possible Range 
of Man's Spiritual Intercourse and 
Appeal. Man is aware of an in- 
ward tie binding him to the Infinite. 
The religious feeling is described by 
Bergson as "the sense of not being 
alone in the universe, the sense of 
relationship between the individual 
and the spiritual Source of life." 
Evolution, however it be defined, 
has reached its consummation and 
triumph in man, a creature upon 
whose consciousness is impressed the 
feeling of a tie connecting him with 
the Infinite and Supreme. This in- 
born sense of not-aloneness is the sign 
of relationship, and the prompter and 
door-opener to fellowship between 
the Father of spirits and His human 
child. Man has a way of presenting 

54 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

himself as a petitioner at the court 
of heaven. He is a solicitor of 
favors. When his desire reaches the 
intensity, definiteness, and dignity of 
prayer, he sends it forth as on wings ; 
enea nrepoevta — winged words — is a 
fitter phrase in this connection than 
in any other. With man prayer 
is instinctive, and they who try to 
reason against it make no headway. 
An instinct pays no more attention 
to objectors or critics than Niagara 
pays to the bubbles on its brink 
or to the butterflies playing hide and 
seek among its rainbows. Prayer is 
futile, is it? Or has no effect be- 
yond self-excitation, by means of 
which a man performs the fine old 
feat of lifting himself by the straps 
of his boots? Well, it is necessary 
to look this matter squarely in the 
face. There cannot be many 
opinions; everybody is shut up to 
one of two. Prayer is communion 
with a personal God and with the 

55 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

benign Father of men, or it is noth- 
ing but make-believe, and all the 
rest of the spiritual life is nothing 
but illusion. Take a good look at 
the consequences and then make 
your choice. If man's praying be 
only as "the murmur of gnats in 
the gloom,' ' then his industry, as 
Tennyson saw, signifies nothing more 
than "the buzzing of bees in their 
hive," and human life is but as "a 
trouble of ants in the gleam of a 
million million suns"; that awesome 
star-sprinkled splendor yonder is but 
a spangled pall flung over the bier 
of human hope; man's only heaven 
is located inside the cemetery gate, 
six feet under ground, and to be 
buried on his back in the dark and 
the dirt is all the fulfillment a per- 
fidious universe allows to the sublime 
yearnings which it has permitted to 
arise in the bosom of this aspiring 
creature with the upturned face and 
the beseeching eyes. Believe that 
56 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

who can. We cannot. We agree with 
Frances Power Cobbe that "if man 
be not immortal, God is not just"; 
and with that robust woman, Rosa 
Bonheur, when she wrote, "Dear 
Madame Fould, the Creator would 
really be the devil himself if he 
made us to live, love, and aspire 
in order to annihilate us afterward 
like generations of bugs which swarm 
in the old houses of Nice, Auvergne, 
Brittany, and the Pyrenees, and 
which we clean people destroy for- 
ever without respite and without 
mercy." In like spirit, Tennyson 
and Queen Victoria agreed together 
in an interview of which the Queen 
says: "Tennyson is grown very old, 
his eyesight much impaired. He 
talked of the many friends he had 
lost, and what it would be if he did 
not feel and know that there is 
another world, where there will be 
no partings; and then he spoke with 
horror of the unbelievers and philos- 

57 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

ophers who would make you believe 
there is no other world, no immor- 
tality, who try to explain all this 
away in a miserable manner. We 
agreed that, were such a thing possi- 
ble, God, who is love, would be far 
more cruel than any human being." 
Against such a God our moral sense 
would prompt us to blaspheme; and 
to demand of him, before he blots 
us out of existence, how he came to 
blunder into making Man a being 
nobler than himself and capable of 
properly despising him. 

As to such things as prayer and 
communion with Heaven, Tennyson 
asserted that he knew God better 
than he knew matter. With matter 
he felt no kinship and could not 
understand its nature. Near the end 
of life he said to a friend: "I cannot 
form the least notion of a brick. 
I don't know what it is. It's no 
use talking about atoms, extension, 
color, weight. I cannot penetrate 
58 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

the nature of a brick. It remains 
incognizable by my mind, which has 
nothing in common with it. But I 
have far more distinct ideas of God, 
who thinks and wills and loves. I 
can understand and sympathize with 
him in my poor way. His nature 
and mine have something in com- 
mon; he is spirit, I am spirit. The 
human soul seems to me in some 
way — I cannot say just how — identi- 
fied with God; and there comes in 
the value of prayer. Prayer is like 
opening a sluice between the great 
ocean and our little channels. 1 ' That 
is to say, Prayer is interflow and 
communion between God and the 
soul. To Tennyson the only intel- 
ligible reality is Mind — mind finite 
and Mind Infinite. God is, and he 
is personal. Man is, and he is 
personal. Between these persons ex- 
ists both close resemblance and real 
relationship; hence communion is 
possible and natural. 

59 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

Speak to him thou for he hears, and spirit with 

spirit may meet — 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands 

and feet. 

Thus did the greatest of English 
laureates reason and feel. 

If, now, somebody objects to the 
testimony of a poet as vision- 
ary and calls for a more sober, 
practical witness who will adhere to 
prosaic matter of fact, he can surely 
desire nothing better than Benjamin 
Franklin, whom all men accept as 
the type of sane, sound sense, a 
sturdily sagacious and broadly bal- 
anced mind. Read, then, his cel- 
ebrated speech in the Constitutional 
Convention, when he moved for daily 
prayer: 

In the beginning of the contest with Britain, 
when we were sensible of danger, we had daily 
prayers in this room for the divine protection. 
Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were gra- 
ciously answered. All of us who were engaged in 
the struggle must have observed frequent instances 
of a superintending Providence in our favor. To 
that kind Providence we owe this happy oppor- 
tunity of consulting in peace on the means of 
60 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

establishing our future national felicity; and have 
we now forgotten this powerful Friend, or do we 
imagine we no longer need his assistance? I have 
lived, sir, a long time [eighty-one years], and the 
longer I live tlie more convincing proof I see of this 
truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And 
if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his 
notice, is it probable that an empire can rise with- 
out his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the 
sacred writings, "that except the Lord build the 
house, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly 
believe this; and I also believe that without his 
concurring aid we shall succeed in this political 
building no better than the builders of Babel. We 
shall be divided by our little partial local interests; 
our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves 
shall become a reproach and a byword down to 
future ages; and what is worse, mankind may 
hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair 
of establishing government by human wisdom, and 
leave us to chance, war, or conquest. I therefore 
beg leave to move that henceforth prayers, im- 
ploring the assistance of heaven and its blessing 
on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every 
morning before we proceed to business, and that 
one or more of the clergy of this city be requested 
to officiate in that service. 

That grim and rugged thinker 
George Meredith, whom nobody ever 
considered a credulous person, said: 
"I certainly think prayer is good, 
good for children and for men. It 
61 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

rouses up and cleanses the nature, 
and searches us through to find what 
we are. It keeps us from living 
thoughtless lives and suffering the 
vapor of our own self-conceit." To 
his own boy, away from home at 
school, he wrote, in 1872, "Do not 
lose the habit of praying. Prayer for 
strength of soul is that passion of 
the soul which catches the gift it 
seeks." And thirty-four years later, 
near his life's end, he writes: "Be 
sure that the spiritual God is acces- 
sible at all moments to the soul de- 
siring Him, and would live in us if 
we would keep the breast clean." 

After the first Atlantic cable was 
laid, an electrician who came down 
from New Foundland to New Ycrk 
told Henry M. Field that he had 
sent a message two thousand miles 
under the sea from Heart's Content, 
New Foundland, to Valentia Bay, 
Ireland, by a current of electricity 

generated in a battery formed in a 
62 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

percussion cap with a single drop 
of water. Dr. Field, being skeptical 
about this, asked Sir William Thom- 
son (later Lord Kelvin) in London 
some years after if the electrician's 
story could possibly be true; and the 
great scientist replied: ''Your in- 
formant might have made a stronger 
statement. With a capsule one quar- 
ter the size of a percussion cap, 
containing a piece of zinc hardly 
visible to the naked eye, wet with 
a drop of water as big as a dew-drop 
or a tear, he could generate a 
sufficient current to carry a message 
from the New World to the Old." 

Now no man comprehends how 
that is done, or, except by its effects, 
can tell anything about the nature 
of the fluid which makes it possible. 
It is really as inexplicable, as incom- 
prehensible, as any miracle recorded 
in the New Testament, and yet it 
is a fact. Does anybody say now 
that it is incredible that a human 
63 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

heart with a tear in it can generate 
some kind of a current which may 
carry a spirit message afar to an 
unseen and spiritual world? If I 
could have stood beside that operator 
when he was sitting at the American 
end of the Atlantic cable at Heart's 
Content, and with a touch of his 
finger was flashing his thought swift 
as lightning under the ocean and 
getting quick answer from a distant 
continent which perhaps he had 
never seen, I would have asked him 
if he considered Mrs. Browning's 
words absurd when she writes: 

I think this passionate sigh which, half begun, 
I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes 
Of God's calm angel, standing in the sun. 

I would have asked him if he 
thought it improbable that the thin 
piping voice of Tiny Tim praying, 
"God bless us every one," might 
fly the firmament through and with- 
out getting lost in the vast solitudes 
and silences find the ear of God. 
64 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

And if he answered that it seemed 
to him unlikely, I would dumfound 
him by demanding why. It is 
proper to ask that man there with 
his ringer on the key, conversing 
mysteriously with another remote 
and invisible hemisphere, whether he 
thinks it incredible that the prayer 
which issues from out the narrow 
gateway of the penitent's lips, kneel- 
ing and raising his small face to 
the infinite heaven whose stars mix 
and tremble in his tears, may fly 
like a dove to the windows of heaven. 
And if he replies with skeptical 
scientific coolness that he thinks it 
incredible, then ask him if he will 
deign to tell us why physical science 
should have all the inexplicable and 
miraculous things and religion be 
permitted to have none. Man is 
capable of converse with heaven ; the 
range of his fellowship includes the 
Soul of the Universe. The Great 
Companion is not dead; but Pro- 
65 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

fessor Clifford, who reported the de- 
cease of the God who made him, 
is dead, and it remains true after 
Clifford as it was before him that 
nothing is more reasonable, real, 
persistent, and inextinguishable than 
prayer. Prayer is as credible and 
feasible as submarine cables or wire- 
less telegraphy. 

Such is the possible, credible, act- 
ual range of the human personality 
in its spiritual communion with the 
Father of Spirits. Sir Oliver Lodge 
reminds his scientific brethren that 
even in prescientific ages men were 
competent to know something, and 
that ages before there were any sci- 
entists there were souls — intelligent, 
studious, needy, and aspiring souls, 
souls of prophets and poets, saints 
and penitents, feeling after God if 
haply they might find him, restless 
unless they could find rest in him. 
The president of the world's great- 
est association of scientists declares 
66 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

himself firmly convinced that such 
souls have had actual access to the 
Heart of the Universe — access as 
profound and intimate as it is real. 
And he is clearly of opinion that 
the voices heard by Socrates and 
Joan of Arc, and no less by count- 
less souls who have sought spiritual 
guidance, are genuine experiences, 
real and natural parts of a rational, 
consistent, coherent, and measurably 
intelligible universe. As to the range 
of the human personality through 
its possible fellowships and com- 
munings, this man of authority 
among scientists, standing on the 
summit of the most modern science, 
is in full accord with the apostle 
who said, " Truly our fellowship is 
with the Father and with his Son 
Jesus Christ." Close after Sir Oliver 
Lodge comes Arthur J. Balfour, one 
of the ablest of England's Prime 
Ministers, a thinker of great acumen, 
author of "The Foundations of Be- 
67 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

lief," who when lecturing on " The- 
ism' ' at Glasgow University in Jan- 
uary, 1914, under the Gifford trust, 
declared his belief in a God whom 
man may adore and love, whom it 
is not profane to call a social God; 
a supreme Spirit who engages with 
other spirits, a God who takes sides, 
who works for great ends and asks 
us to work with Him. And if any 
complain of this as anthropomor- 
phism, he hoped to commit worse 
crimes before finishing his lectures. 

Consider the Range of man's Ac- 
quisitiveness — his restless ambition 
to obtain and possess. His acquisi- 
tiveness is almost as eager and in- 
satiable as his inquisitiveness. A 
near-animal named Whitman said 
he would like to go and live 
with animals because they "are so 
placid and self-contained; they are 
not dissatisfied with their condition; 
they do not lie awake in the dark 
and weep for their sins; they do 

68 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

not discuss their duty to God; and 
especially over the whole earth no 
one of them is demented with the 
mania of owning things." That is 
true, and is the sign and proof that 
they are brutes. That they are 
content as they are with what they 
have proves that they were meant 
for that and nothing more. With 
man it is entirely otherwise. He is 
dissatisfied with his condition; he 
does sometimes weep for his sins; 
he is sometimes concerned about his 
duty to God; and he is uneasy with 
a desire to obtain and possess. And 
that is because of the fact that he 
is a man and not a beast. "What 
means this immortal demand for 
more?" asks Emerson. ' 'There is no 
such greedy beggar as this terribly in- 
satiate soul." "Unappeasable," Kip- 
ling calls the spirit of man. 

First and nearest we perceive that 
man's covetousness reaches out after 
worldly values. Born with much or 
69 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

with nothing, he wants the earth, 
and sometimes comes near getting 
it. A barefoot boy who drove the 
cows to pasture in Delaware County, 
New York, coveted wealth, reached 
for it, and got it, dying at the age 
of fifty-eight, owner of a hundred 
millions. 

A curiously suggestive fact is that 
our courts declare that physical 
ownership is not limited to the sur- 
face of the earth, but extends in- 
definitely upward. There is no law 
on any statute book that attempts 
to bound a landholder's possessions 
skyward. The Maoris of New Zea- 
land shrewdly undertook to claim 
what was on and above the ground 
they had sold to the white settlers, 
and proceeded to cut off the timber; 
but at once the principle was em- 
bodied in law that whoever holds a 
deed to a bit of land is entitled to 
everything on it and above it ad 
infinitum. A court enjoins a tel- 
70 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

ephone company from running wires 
across a field without the owner's 
consent, for the reason that he owns 
the space above his land indefinitely, 
even to the fixed stars. Furthermore, 
there are court decisions making 
ownership include also whatever may 
come down on a man's land from 
above. The Supreme Court of Iowa 
decided that an aerolite falling from 
the sky is the property of the owner 
of the soil on which it falls. It is, 
therefore, matter of judicial decision 
that a man may be a legal possessor 
of something that has come to him 
from beyond this world. Remark- 
able range of ownership this human 
creature has. 

But man's covetousness extends 
beyond the possession of worldly 
goods. Having knowledge of better 
things, knowledge awakens desire, 
and after desire goes active ac- 
quisitive pursuit. You say covet- 
ousness is forbidden? No! It is 
71 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

divinely ordained. It is instinctive, 
and to forbid the instincts is useless; 
their cravings are bound to reach 
actively toward satisfaction. In- 
stinct is God's directest command. 
Man's inborn passion for possessing 
is also sanctioned by Scripture, only 
he is bidden to elevate his acquisitive- 
ness to the level of the highest 
objects of desire. " Covet earnestly 
the best gifts." They who are risen 
with Christ are in sight of great 
prizes and must seek those things 
which are above. The search is 
endless, the seeker is immortal, and 
the things themselves imperishable. 
With reference to realms supernal, 
man may be an investor as well as 
an investigator, and from this world 
may make investments in another as 
easily as a London banker can buy 
United States bonds in New York 
by cable. While still here in this 
life a man may lay up such treasures 

on the other side of his death-bed 
72 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

as will make dying gain. There is 
a safe-deposit for the soul's val- 
uables. We may store our goods 
where neither moths nor thieves nor 
fire can get at them. It is possible for 
this human tourist to obtain a letter 
of credit here on which he may travel 
through eternity. One whom no- 
body is wise enough or good enough 
to be warranted in contradicting 
said, "Do certain things and thou 
shalt have treasure in heaven/ ' I 
have seen a woman in a poorhouse 
who said substantially that, by the 
infinite grace of a rich and beneficent 
Friend, she held a mortgage on the 
real estate of upper realms; that the 
mortgage was recorded up there and 
down here; that some day she ex- 
pected to foreclose, and from her 
death-bed would fling her possessive 
pronoun against the sky, crying, My 
God, my Saviour, my Heavenly 
Home! Blessed are they, and as 
wise as blessed, who joyously take 

73 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

their Lord at his word. One such 
confident sweet saint, lifting her 
thin hands, exclaimed with her last 
breath, "I'm coming. Give me my 
palm," with as good a right as 
Paul had to say, "There is laid up 
for me a crown of life." 

A prodigious claimant surely is this 
covetous mortal creature, entered on 
the lists of life here between the sod 
and the sun. He wants some satis- 
fying portion, is bound to have it, 
will litigate his claim persistently 
through all disappointments against 
any number of adverse verdicts, 
carrying his case up from court to 
court, confident that the last and 
greatest tribunal, the Supreme Court 
of the Universe, will confirm and 
declare his claim to satisfying riches 
and issue an order putting him in 
possession of his heritage. The man- 
agement of his case is believed to be 
in good safe hands. He is said to 
have a transcendently able "Advo- 

74 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

cate with the Father.' ' We speak 
of the man who avails himself of 
his birthright and his privileges. 

Nothing less than we have indi- 
cated is the range of the human 
personality in its covetous desire of 
possession. 

Finally, it is legitimate and easy, 
as Sidney Lanier said, to explain and 
prove to man what he may be in 
terms of what he is. Present attain- 
ment and development intimate but 
do not measure his significance and 
worth. Not the show he makes, 
but the promise he gives; not ac- 
tualities, but potentialities, constitute 
his value. Much in him is rudi- 
mentary. His future is in germ. 
Growth is his privilege. Quickening 
influences brood over him to be- 
friend and foster his latent possi- 
bilities. Germination, or something 
like it, our life here is. An acorn 
lies in the ground. Sun and air 
awake it and encourage it to make 

75 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

an effort to rise in life. They put 
their lips to the earth and whisper 
down to it through the spongy pores 
of the soil with soft, warm breath, 
saying, "Come up! Come up!" till 
they stimulate and coax that buried 
acorn up into an oak. Incubation, 
or something like it, our life here 
is. Up yonder on the rocky cliff in 
a rough nest of sticks lies an egg. 
The eagle's breast-feathers warm it, 
the sky bends down and invites it, 
the abysses of the air beckon to 
it, saying, "All our heights and 
depths are for you; come and occupy 
them"; and all the peaks and the 
roomy spaces up under the rafters 
of the sky, where the twinkling stars 
sit sheltered like twittering sparrows, 
call down to the pent-up little life, 
"Come up hither!" and the live 
germ inside hears through the thin 
walls of its prison and is coaxed 
out of the shell and out of the nest 
and then off the cliff and up and 
76 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

away into the wide ranges of sun- 
lit air and down into the deep gulfs 
that gash the mountains apart. Yes, 
our life on earth is incubation. A 
mothering immensity overbroods us 
as we lie on this ledge of Time over- 
beetling eternity till instincts latent 
in us burst alive and the soul be- 
comes like a nest astir with flutter- 
ing things that are getting ready 
to range and mount and float from 
height to height. 

C. B. Upton, the Jew, professor 
of philosophy in Mansfield College, 
England, says that "the ideals of 
the soul are invitations' , ; and au- 
thentic invitations they are indeed 
from the Lord of a high manor to 
be his guest above. Many years ago 
some stranger asked William Taylor 
in Australia, "What is your place of 
residence?" "I'm residing on the 
earth at present, but do not know 
how soon I shall change my res- 
idence," answered the world- wander- 

77 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

ing evangelist. He talked as if he 
thought he had somewhere else to 
go to. Years later he went. He 
is there now. Was Abel Stevens a 
fool when he wrote to Zion's Herald, 
"Thank God, I am walking by faith 
and hoping for higher worlds"? "I 
should like," wrote Wordsworth to a 
young lady, "to visit Italy again 
before I move to another planet." 
A crippled boy sat in his wheeled 
chair on the ferryboat and a sympa- 
thetic lady, pitying his helplessness, 
exclaimed to her friend, "Poor fel- 
low! What has he to look forward 
to?" The cripple overheard it, and 
turning his head, said pleasantly, 
"Wings, some day." A woman who 
lived a shut-up life wrote: 

I never hear the word "escape" 
Without a quicker blood, 
A sudden expectation, 
A flying attitude. 

I never read of prisons broad 
By soldiers battered down, 
But I tug childlike at my bars — 
Longing for things beyond. 
78 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

Man looks for an hour of libera- 
tion which shall repeal the flesh and 
cancel the clod. He has a notion 
that earth's roof is heaven's floor, 
and expects to break jail by way 
of the skylight. His understanding 
is that when discharged and man- 
umitted here he is requisitioned and 
subpoenaed elsewhere. 

Renan said in his last days, "The 
inward worth of a man is measured 
by his religious tendencies." What 
are these but gravitations to draw 
him home? Perhaps the most superb 
face in art is that of the Virgin in 
Titian's Assumption at Venice. A 
man has been seen to sit motionless 
and almost breathless for hours, rapt 
in the fascination of that face and 
the spell of that great picture. The 
wonder is not the woman alone, but 
the rich bathing splendor into which 
she rises. It is humanity being 
drawn home by the hovering heaven. 
Hid somewhere underfoot in the 

79 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

heart of this rock-crusted globe is 
the seat of the power called gravita- 
tion which holds man's body down. 
Anchored in the hidden heart of 
God above is the attraction which 
controls the spirit and commands 
and orders home a liberated human- 
ity when it slips the leash of matter 
and goes free. 

What better can we say than that 
life here is incubation, and death is 
the final launching away off this 
narrow ledge of Time? When lib- 
eration and levitation come, it will 
not seem strange to be afloat on 
the bosom of eternity, but as natural 
as nature's self. We were made for 
that life as surely as for this, and 
folded within us are the faculties 
that fit us for it. The young eagle, 
pushed out of the nest and off the 
cliff's edge, is buoyed by wings suffi- 
cient though before untried. Some 
"full-grown power informs her from 

the first," and she sweeps easily 
80 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

away through superior spaces vast 
and unexplored, then turns and slides 
softly down smooth slopes of air, 
then turns again, wheels and ascends 
by unseen spiral inclines, nor mar- 
vels in the least to find herself 
"strenuously beating up the silent 
boundless regions of the sky." She 
is as much at home there, afloat 
in and supported on the unseen, as 
ever she was on the crag. She 
knows neither strangeness, nor dan- 
ger, nor fear. She is meant for 
the airy heavens when her time 
comes, as certainly as for the cliff 
until her time comes. Nor could you 
coax her back to be content with 
the nest of sticks and the narrow 
ledge whence she launched away into 
her legitimate, large natural liberty. 
Likewise, the soul is secretly uncon- 
sciously equipped to survive and sub- 
sist hereafter as naturally and easily 
as here. True for all realms and 
worlds are the lines: 

8t 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

Go where he will, the good man is at home; 
Where the good Spirit leads him, there's his road, 
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed. 

August with lofty dignity are the 
antique words of Sir Thomas Browne, 
the Norwich physician: " Those that 
look merely upon my outside, perus- 
ing only my condition and fortunes, 
do err as to my altitude, for I am 
above Atlas' shoulders. The mass 
of flesh that circumscribes me limits 
not my mind. You cannot measure 
me, for I take my circle to be above 
360 degrees. There is surely a piece 
of divinity in us, something that is 
more lasting than the elements and 
owes no homage to the sun. Nature 
tells me I am the image of God; 
he that understands not this much 
hath not learned his first lesson and 
is yet to begin the alphabet of man." 
A daring but wholly justified declara- 
tion, which recalls a similar saying 
of Chrysostom about the apostle to 

the Gentiles, "Thus this man, Paul, 
82 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

three cubits high, became tall enough 
to touch the third heaven." 

Geometry cannot measure Man; 
his circle exceeds 360 degrees. As- 
tronomy cannot calculate his orbit; 
it knows not the equation of his 
path. A Pilgrim of the Infinite is 
he; and the old hymn, familiar to 
our childhood, sings on in our souls: 

Thus onward we move, and save God above 
None guesseth how wondrous the journey will 
prove. 



83 



A PILGRIM OF THE INFINITE 

They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: 
wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their 
God."— Heb. ii. 16. 

"Thy statutes have been my songs in the house 
of my pilgrimage." — Psa. 119. 54. 

Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling 
O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat 
shore: 
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are 
telling 
Of that new life when sin shall be no more! 
Angels of Jesus, angels of light, 
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night! 

Onward we go, for still we hear them singing, 
"Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come"; 

And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing, 
The music of the gospel leads us home. 

Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing, 
The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea, 

And laden souls by thousands, meekly stealing, 
Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to thee. 

Rest comes at length, though life be long and 
dreary; 
The day must dawn, and darksome night be 
past; 
All journeys end in welcome to the weary, 

And heaven, the heart's true home, will come at 
last. 

Angels, sing on! your faithful watches keeping; 

Sing us sweet fragments of the songs above; 
Till morning's joy shall end the night of weeping, 

And life's long shadows break in cloudless love. 
— Frederick W. Faber. 

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